


Do You Want Forever With Reid Oliver?

by danrdarrenc



Category: As the World Turns
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 17:01:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2436215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danrdarrenc/pseuds/danrdarrenc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One question. Two different scenarios, the same answer. AU and canon-compliant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do You Want Forever With Reid Oliver?

1\. _Do you want forever with Reid Oliver?_

When Lily first asks him that question, he doesn’t think much on it. His main concern at that moment is that Noah gets his eye sight back. It’s only later, when he’s curled up under his covers, alone in his bedroom, that he realizes he never answered her. 

When things get serious with Reid halfway through the summer of that year, Luke falls asleep some nights, his mother’s question reverberating around his mind, unbidden. The night he finds out Reid quit his job for him - for their relationship - is the first night Luke dreams of standing at an altar, Reid at his side.  
Luke learns soon after that - ironically because of a failed wedding - that Reid does not believe in marriage. That day is the day Luke knows definitely his answer to Lily’s question. It’s also the day Luke buries his desire to get married.

From then on, Luke only occasionally thinks about that dream he had so long ago, that dream of him and Reid vowing their love to each other in front of their (Luke’s) family. As their one-year anniversary approaches, Luke fleetingly imagines himself proposing to Reid but pushes the thought aside in an instant. Reid would probably laugh at him.

Luke doesn’t think on it again, not really, not consciously, although his subconscious sometimes betrays and sends him pesky dreams of a wedding with Reid. On the mornings after those intrusions, Luke shakes it off and never once lets that long-faded wish diminish his happiness with Reid. 

The subject of marriage comes up only once as the years progress and it’s because Luke makes a Freudian slip just after their fourth anniversary. 

They’re sitting together on the couch in the apartment they inherited from Katie, Reid’s arm around Luke’s shoulders and Luke curled into his side. Reid is staring absentmindedly at the Cubs game (which they’re losing, of course) and Luke has his nose buried in a book. 

Suddenly, Reid says, “I was at the Lakeview today for a meeting. I overheard your mom talking about wedding plans.”

"Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you. Mom and Dad are getting married. Again," Luke adds as an afterthought. "Honestly, I thought I’d be married before they ever even got back together." The words are out of his mouth before he realizes what he’s said. 

He looks up from his book to judge the reaction on Reid’s face, but his expression is stony as ever and unreadable. After a minute of Reid continuing to resolutely watch the game, Luke returns to reading his book.

The silence is just becoming claustrophobic, so unlike it was before Luke’s slip, when Reid asks in a carefully controlled voice, “Is that something you imagined with Noah? Getting married?”

Luke blinks at his book. “Not just with Noah,” he whispers. He’s not sure Reid even heard over the sound of the TV. 

During the year that follows, they don’t speak about that brief conversation and Luke thinks Reid has likely forgotten about it.

On the morning of their fifth anniversary, Luke is awoken by Reid’s lips fluttering gently up and down his neck and across the bare skin of his shoulders. 

"Mmmm," Luke hums, still half-asleep. He feels Reid smile against his back and his own lips turn up into a small, content smile. 

They stay that way for another minute, Luke in the limbo between asleep and awake, Reid peppering kisses across his skin, and then Luke turns around under Reid’s arm so that they are facing each other. 

"Happy anniversary," Reid says.

Luke’s eyes sparkle as he grins. “Do you remember when we first started dating? You told me you’d always forget my birthday and our anniversary. So far you’ve forgotten neither.” 

"Yeah. Don’t tell anyone that, Mr. Snyder. I have a reputation to maintain."

"I’ll keep that in mind, Dr. Oliver." Luke inadvertently lets out a snort of amusement before he presses their lips together in a gentle but lingering kiss. 

Reid smiles into the kiss, wraps his arms around Luke’s waist, and pulls Luke closer so their chests are flush with each other. Luke goes willingly and slides his fingers into Reid’s sleep-mussed curls as he pushes his tongue past Reid’s lips. Reid responds enthusiastically, deepens the kiss, and moans into Luke’s mouth when Luke tangles their legs together and pushes him onto his back. 

As soon as he’s on top of Reid, Luke breaks the kiss for air before almost immediately attaching his lips to Reid’s neck, alternately sucking and kissing a hickey into Reid’s collarbone. 

Reid’s eyes flutter closed, his breaths coming quick and shallow now in his increasing state of arousal. 

Luke is just beginning to trail hot, wet, open-mouthed kisses down Reid’s chest when the alarm on Luke’s phone goes off. Luke groans against Reid’s stomach and drops his forehead onto Reid’s chest. 

"Damn. I have a meeting in half an hour. I totally forgot." He peppers butterfly kisses as he comes back up towards Reid’s face. "Why did I schedule a meeting on our anniversary _and_ your day off? I’m so dumb,” Luke mumbles before stealing another kiss from Reid’s lips. 

Luke pulls away but makes no move to get out of bed.

"Marry me?" The words leave Reid’s mouth in a rush.

Luke’s eyes grow wide as saucers and his heart skips several beats. He blinks rapidly, one, two, three times to get his short-circuited mind working again and then scans Reid’s face. There is no sense of panic there; in fact, Reid is smiling softly at him. 

"Are you serious?" Luke breathes.

"I was going to surprise you tonight with dinner and flowers and candles and all that romantic stuff you’re so fond of." He twists around, shuffles through the drawer of his nightstand, and then turns back to Luke, a small velvet box in his hand. Luke’s breath hitches as Reid opens the ring box. "See, I even got you a ring." It’s meant to be sarcastic but Reid’s voice is full of only love. 

"Reid," Luke whispers. He looks at Reid and his eyes sparkle with tears. A grin that could light up the world spreads across Luke’s face as he reverently pulls the ring out of the box and cradles it like it’s the most precious gem. 

Reid watches, breathless, as Luke slips the ring onto his left hand. “Is that a ‘yes’?”

"Oh! Yes! Yes, of course! I’ve wanted to marry you since you quit the hospital for me. I love you so much!" Luke smashes their lips together but they can barely kiss because Luke’s grin is so wide and Reid is laughing with happiness. 

They’re just managing to actually kiss when Luke’s phone beeps again and Luke swears under his breath.

"I really." Kiss. "Have to." Kiss. "Take a shower." Kiss. Kiss. "And get dressed." He breaks away but smiles down at Reid. "The meeting’s in fifteen minutes now. Grandmother will kill me if I’m late."

Reid frees one of his hands from around Luke’s waist and cups Luke’s face. “We wouldn’t want that, would we?” 

"No we wouldn’t." He presses a final kiss to Reid’s lips and then slips out of bed. 

Reid grins to himself as he watches Luke walk into the bathroom. He hears the shower turn on and a second later Luke pops his head through the doorway. 

"Oh, by the way. Don’t think this got you out of that dinner with flowers and candles, Dr. Oliver. We have a lot of celebrating to do." He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively and then disappears into the bathroom again.

Luke grins all the way through his shower, occasionally stopping to stare at the shiny new ring on his finger, and can’t wait to finally tell his mother just how much he wants forever with Reid Oliver.

___________

2) _Do you want forever with Reid Oliver?_

Luke blinks his eyes open and rubs his hand across his eyes. His cheeks are wet and he realizes he was crying in his sleep. He’d had another one of those dreams again last night - one of those dreams where Reid is still alive and they are together and happy and newly engaged.

When Lily had asked him if he wanted forever with Reid Oliver that day outside Noah’s hospital room, he knew even then that his only answer could be that he just wants Noah to get better. He would’t have admitted it to her, probably wouldn’t have admitted it to himself at that point, but he knows in his heart that ever since Dallas he’d had fleeting thoughts of what his life might be in five, ten, fifteen years and that Reid was always there. At night, almost every night for four years, he still is.

Too bad reality’s a bitch. 

Luke sighs and slides out of bed. He takes a long, hot shower and scrubs his skin almost raw as he tries to shake off the dream from which he had awoken. 

It had been a nice dream, waking up to Reid peppering his bare skin with kisses, Reid proposing to him in bed on the morning of their fifth anniversary. That would have been next year, Luke realizes as he shuts off the water. 

When Reid had died everyone had told him that he just needed some time, that with time the pain would lessen, that things would get better. He supposed that was true to some extent; he is no longer angry at Reid for trying to be a hero and leaving him alone. But the more time that passes, the more times he sees Chris Hughes strutting around Oakdale, the deeper the longing is, and the more intensely he misses Reid. 

As he brushes his teeth and splashes water on his face, Luke thinks how nice it would be to drown the feeling of that dream in a bottle of scotch and then mentally kicks himself. Drinking himself to death won’t help. Reid wouldn’t want that.

At the thought, Luke flashes back to that conversation they’d had so long ago, when things were new and good and he was so blindingly happy it stunned him. 

_"I’m not willing to invest so much to get so little in return. I want the whole enchilada, you hear me? You better take care of that kidney of yours. If I’m going to put myself out there, fall in love with you, I am not going to lose you."_

Luke laughs bitterly at the irony as he grabs a shirt from his drawer. He’s about to pull it on when he realizes which shirt it is. His eyes water and his lip trembles. It’s the long-sleeved black shirt Reid was so fond of. He’d kept most of the few things Reid had had; the shirts he wore as a reminder of what he’d lost and the forever that could have been. 

He brings the shirt to his face and buries his nose in the fabric; it has long stopped smelling like Reid but an image of the two of them sitting on the couch in his mother’s house playing chess flits to his front of his mind. He smiles a little at the memory and pulls the shirt over his head. 

He stares at himself in the mirror. Reid’s shirt doesn’t quite fit him as snugly as it used to; the longing for Reid and for what might have been has been suffocating the past few months and he hasn’t been eating as well as he should. 

Luke breathes heavily, trying to abate the tears that form at the corners of his eyes, and wraps his arms around himself. He closes his eyes, tries to remember how it felt those rare, few times Reid had wrapped his arms around him in a hug. He still wonders what it would have been like to have Reid holding him firmly yet gently as they made love. 

Luke imagines sometimes the life, the forever, he would have shared with Reid:

_Waking up and falling asleep next to Reid, Reid’s arm draped over his shoulder and their legs tangled together or his head resting comfortably on Reid’s chest._

_Reading a book in the middle of the night until Reid comes home from his emergency surgery and Reid admonishing him for not going back to sleep. That reprimand almost always ends up in sex._

_Reid making breakfast for them both on the weekends and Luke surprising him every so often with a nice, big dinner (that Emma has cooked, of course, because Luke can’t manage to make grilled cheese without burning it)._

_Luke wearing Reid’s sweatpants and old Harvard sweatshirts as they lounge together on the couch on lazy Sunday afternoons._

_Reid reluctantly (and secretly enjoying) celebrating birthdays, Christmas, and anniversaries._

_Growing old together._

Pushing away images of the life that could never be, Luke grabs a granola bar from the kitchen, pulls on his - Reid’s - thick, brown leather jacket, and swipes his keys off the table by the door. 

Someday, Luke thinks, he’ll be happy again, that he’ll have a forever with someone. But he knows as sure as he knows his own name that he’ll never stop dreaming of his lost forever with Reid Oliver.


End file.
